Tethering - An Underused Feature Of Current Smartphones ?

11 Sep 2012 by Simon Thomas

Tethering is currently being underused by smartphone owners according to new research conducted by uSwitch. The study showed that 47.56 per cent of those studied hadn't ever used tethering on their smartphone.

We're not all that surprised by the results because the operators initially banned tethering or made people pay extra to use the feature . Additionally, the operators arn't keen to push tethering because it could impact negatively on their mobile broadband dongle sales.

For those who've never heard of tethering it enables you to use smartphone's internet connection on other devices. It works by creating a personal WiFi network to share your smartphones connection with up to 4 other devices.

A lot of mobile contracts now offer unlimited data which makes tethering more viable than ever before. For example, users can tether their unlimited internet from their smartphone to their WiFi only tablets, such as the iPad or Nexus 7.

Tethering is currently available on all Android, Blackberry and Apple's devices. None of the major UK operators charge for tethering anymore, so there isn't any reason not to take advantage of the feature .

3G feels that the responsibility of the media and the industry as a whole to promote tethering to customers and we'll be doing our best to do our part !